Leeds United- Why is it some fans are this unhappy?

It has been a somewhat satisfactory half to the season for Leeds United. The West Yorkshire club sit seventh in The Championship and very much in contention for the playoffs which on paper is not bad at all but there is a vast amount of the fan base unhappy.

One point of view is that at this stage last season, United sat third in the table under Garry Monk and perhaps some may feel a replication of that should have been met.

The trouble is, Chris Wood scored an awful amount of important goals for them last season in games which it did not look like they would get anything.

With the amount of money Leeds got for Chris Wood, when he was sold to Burnley, it is hard to disagree that failing to sign a suitable replacement for him is a disappointment.

Three strikers have come in to Elland Road in the summer; Jay Roy Grot, a 19 year-old dutch forward who looks way off being ready for first team football; Caleb Ekuban, who has looked promising but has spent the majority of the season on the touchline and then you have Pierre-Michel Lasogga who has of course got a very good pedigree as a player in reality he is not the Lasogga of two years ago who was on the fringes of the Germany squad.

The German has found life tough and despite scoring 5 goals in a limited amount of games, his performances have been heavily criticised.

Kemar Roofe has made a sound attempt at filling the boots as a striker but there is still doubts as whether he is an out and out number 9.

The problem Leeds are faced with is that owner, Andrea Radrizzani, works by using a very fixed wage budget i.e. he doesn’t spend money he feels to be unnecessary.

In a nutshell, this is because he is simply a very good business man and there is no doubt that the Italian has done incredibly well off the pitch to sort things out at Leeds.

The only issue with working this way is that it is going to be very difficult to attract high profile players to the club. It may be an old cliche that so called ‘Championship experience’ is needed in this league and I don’t believe it to really be a necessity, however, it does seem something of that kind of player is crying out to be signed in this Leeds side.

Derby are a team that screams Championship experience and are enjoying enormous success this year and sit second in the table.

It upset a few characters today when Phil Hay, of the Yorkshire Evening Post, claimed that despite Chris Martin being offered out for loan, Leeds would not go in for him because of his wage with many feeling there to be a lack of ambition.

Here are just a few that are angered by a supposed lack of wanting to spend:

Leeds United Football Club, a Club where we can sell our 30 goal a season No.9 for £20m but not replace him with a £6m/£8m one because it’s ‘too expensive’. I’m starting to think we actually believe we can get out of this league on foreign hopefuls. Great. #LUFChttps://t.co/NaV5XmakFd

Love to know why we can’t compete with the big spenders in this league when we are bringing in more on ticket sales, TV revenue & players sales than anybody else. I’ll be really fucked off if we don’t invest in genuine quality, we need to push on from January. #lufc

It is easy to see why there is a split fan base at the moment but in reality it is still early doors and there is still plenty of time in the window to go.

With a pretty miserable start to the new year with a defeat to Ipswich and being dumped out of the FA Cup by Newport County it definitely does not help things.

One problem that has been sorted out is a new left-back which they have really needed, with the signing of Laurens De Bock from Club Brugge, but to really contend with what is currently a really strong top six in the Championship it is hard to say more investment isn’t needed in the window but as stated there is still plenty of time to go.

What do you think Leeds fans? Can we really say something as strong that it is a lack of ambition from the owner? Is he just being a good business man? Or is it simply that the funds are not as available as people expect? Get in touch and let us know!